Oh yeah, and I have a short story that’s getting published! What?! All I can say is, it’s spring, the time of year where I traditionally get myself in a newspaper or publication of some sort!

http://www.unl.edu/plains/CGPS_images/publications/psr/PSR%2011%20invite%204-09.pdf

I’ve been at college for nearly 4 years. I’ve had tendonitis in my hands for 3 of them.

Today I was thinking about it, because I have big papers due, and my hands are pretty inflamed from all the typing… at the end of every semester it’s this way.

I wonder what these last 3 years would have been like without pain in my hands.

Sometimes it’s hard to seperate my procrastination from it. I mean, it’s one thing to sit down and type a paper, in the spring semester when you are just out of motivation for school. It’s another thing to sit down and type that same paper under the same circumstances when your hands hurt. Am I just being a baby and avoiding the paper? Or… well, I’ve got to write it anyway, so there is no “or.” Ow.

Or to be tired and distracted in class… how much of it is just me not getting enough sleep and not focusing, and how much is it because my hands are tingling and burning constantly?

I have to pour myself out a lot more. It’s taken more sacrifice than even I notice. School is harder for me because of these hands and the state they are in. My 38 page paper last semester? Contained hours of blood, sweat, and tears, literally.

Thanks God, for Ibuprophen. And for helping me through. Cause by the way, even though I’d be fine if my tendonitis were to suddenly disappear ANY TIME, I still wouldn’t change the last 3 years. No way.  

3 weeks plus one semester left!

Sometimes, I get a little jealous of my brother. He has many timeless things that just match up perfectly with how he his and who he is. No, he doesn’t have the million cowboy things (pickups, trailers, more tack, more horses, a new pair of chaps to add to the 5 pairs already owned, etc) that he’d want. But he does have this:

And he has his dog.

And he can ride into the sunset.

Oh my gosh. My brothers are amazing! I MISS THEM!

(The boys and Will -Cherry’s brother)

As Jacob says, “sexy bros”. As I say- “No comment.”

He is so strange. They all are..

Crazy!

Or at least my friend Kaley would tell you that.

So today I was trying to email one of my professors from last semester.. and to get his email address, I thought I would just forward one of the emails I sent him last semester and just change the actual content.

Well, it didn’t actually work out that way, as I found out 20 minutes later. When I went to look at my inbox, I saw this:

 
From: Frances Patterson
To: Frances Patterson
Subject: Paper

Hello,

I was just wondering if I could get my programming paper back. If it wouldn’t be a problem, you could just leave it with Judy and I could pick it up at the family science office.

Thanks a lot! Hope you are having a good new semester so far!

~Frances

I just got back from DCC (Denver Christmas Conference). It was great! I knew that God would use that time away from everyday stuff, not to mention the laziness of being at home, to speak to me and do work in my heart- and He did.

A few small things:

We stayed right on the 16th street mall in Denver, and so every day as we walked to eat or to walgreens or whatever, I would see quite a few homeless people. I thought of Stace and how she spent her summer at the open door mission in Denver, and how she fully loves serving in that kind of a setting. Also, it made my money (“my” money) seem a whole lot less important to me. It boiled it down to every dollar.. how much does whatever it is that I could buy with this dollar matter to me, versus what it could mean to someone who doesn’t have this dollar. Anyway, it made me think.

“Give it away,” said Bryan Loritts… over and over again. “Ouch,” said Frances, as God continually spoke right through him to my heart. How about this: “If you’re not giving it away, the passion’s gonna leave ya.” (My passion quickly poured, then went down to a drizzle, last semester, leaving me pretty dry. “Give it away” .. pouring into someone what God has done and is doing in your own life.)

Or this: “The American church does pretty great with addition, but terrible with multiplication.” … as in, producing reproducing followers of Jesus Christ; making disciples.
“I see a lot of tasks on your calendar… but where are your priorities?”
-Dennis Rainey, looking over Bryan Loritts’ schedule.
(“Ouch” -Frances)
“ Lots of motion……………………………….. but no movement. “
(“Ouch” -Frances)

Being there with my UNO family in Christ = priceless.

The world.. justice….. hard, cold facts on being lukewarm…  time to continue the Pray / Think process about next year/after I (Lord willing)graduate… worship….. prayer about my upcoming (AHHHH one month away TOMORROW!) trip to Jamaica.                            It was all good.

God gave me many things this last week- thoughts, heart attitudes, new ideas & desires, verses that have stuck with me.

“Give it away.”

ep⋅i⋅dem⋅ic ,ɛpɪˈdɛmɪk [ep-i-dem-ik] 

–noun

(Now, I have nothing against what I’m about to write about… in fact I am happy for the large numbers of my friends who are newly in relationships or whatever, and extremely excited for some who are recently engaged! BUT I am still overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.. never before have I noticed this much “twitterpation” at one time.)

The USA’s twitterpation epidemic continued to grow last week, with cases mounting in every state and dozens of new relationships reported among young adults, the government’s leading twitterpation expert said Friday.

Rising numbers have become afflicted so far, with widespread twitterpation activity reported in 49 states, up from 44 last week, says Pierce D. Hart, director of the Centers for Twitterpation Control and Prevention, engagement division.

“Twitterpation activity has continued to increase in a dramatic fashion,” he said in his weekly twitterpation update. “We’ve exceeded the normal parameters of what we’d expect for the pre-Valentine’s Day season.”

Hart blamed much of twitterpation’s recent influx on the increasing dominance of Facebook. In previous years people could build up immunity through chocolate or… chocolate. As a result, a Twitterpation Administration advisory panel recommended on Thursday that Facebook users stop the use of “fake” relationship statuses to slow down the seeming storm of twitterpation.

What I like my priorities to be:

God
Family
Friends
Cru
Camp
School
Work
And so on

But as far as how I should be spending my time all of this month, the priorities want to force themselves upon me as follows:

School aka 30 page paper
…. school also ties for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th….
Then comes a strange, sad mix of God, family, and friends, and camp and Cru…
Followed by work I guess.
Followed by eating food. And sleeping. But they are barely on that chart.

I don’t like it.

(Cru Trick-or-treating for canned goods & party @ foundry)

Well well well! 3 roommates plus an almost-roomie transformed into Sesame Street characters! And I do mean characters. No pre-made costumes for us… only the result of hours of confabulation and trips to dollar stores and thrift stores will do.

They collected canned goods with Dorothy and a movie theater floor before making a grand entrance!

They weren’t the only characters at this party…

I believe I did a pretty good job of staying in character all night. I purposefully deprived myself of sleep and did too much school and work all week, just so I’d be extra grouchy…

Postponing the completion of our astronomy lab so that Val’s stilts could reach completion earlier in the week! And then we realized we were all wearing our colors… so a picture had to happen! 

What a bunch of dorks!!

Seriously? I have way too much fun with these people.  

P.S. we won the costume contest! And as a group we collected over 500 cans for the Omaha Food Bank!

So my cooler cool brother Joe has been making this spoof of the show Prison Break, his are called “Prison Sprain.” Get it? He’s so funny.

Well, so we had our cru women’s retreat this friday and saturday! It was amazingly fun. But we went to this camp place that used to be a military something-or-other… and it had this strange aura of prison sprain about it. I stole val’s camera and took pictures. Kindof a spoof of a spoof. Check it out:

The general atmosphere.

The place was completely surrounded by chain link and barbed wire! The gate gets shut and locked each night! “Hmm… how to get out…”

If I were trying to get out, I would have needed to know the location of things like this.

Testing the fence for weaknesses… looking casual all the while.

The prison phone… with a horseshoe on top?

An integral part of my plan.

Through the roof- that’s the way to go!

Yep, I think Joe and I need to go there and film on location.